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Whether it’s at the end of the 2024 season or even earlier, Logan Sargeant’s Formula 1 career is circling the drain. Just as it reaches a relative peak.
Sargeant's pace has undeniably improved over the last three weekends since he has been on the same specification as team-mate Alex Albon - although he still claims there are small differences in “optimisation”. And when asked by The Race to clarify whether that meant between the cars themselves or in set-up, he calls it “a bit of both”.
According to Sargeant, those micro-differences still account for something. He believes he has to drive “one thousandth faster to go one hundredth faster”. And a tenth, coincidentally or not, is just about the deficit he has to Albon on average over the last three qualifying sessions; it’s actually 0.16s, and that shrinks to 0.06s if you include qualifying for the Austria sprint race too.
Sargeant reckons he’s been driving to this level since Melbourne. “The big thing is last year I couldn’t say I was doing a good job whereas this year I know I can say that,” he insisted in Belgium.
“And I can be happy with the job I’ve done with a lot of the things I’ve done.
“Whether you or everyone else gets to see that or not, unfortunately isn’t always in my control.”
Therein lies one of many hints of tension that have arisen in recent weekends, with at least some internal friction inevitable even if frustration at the wider situation is Sargeant’s main grievance.
He was not impressed by a suggestion from ex-F1 driver Marcus Ericsson, on his Swedish podcast, that Sargeant and team principal James Vowles are not on speaking terms, and responded with a personal swipe. But Sargeant also wasn’t massively convincing that everything is rosy. Because (regardless of the specific driver-team boss relationship) it isn’t.
“It hasn't been a particularly easy season with the amount of things that have happened, both to me, and from a team perspective we've struggled in some areas,” he said.
“Of course, it can look like our relationship is worse than it is from the outside.”
Both Sargeant and Vowles say their relationship has not broken down, with Williams feeling that team and driver are quite well aligned at the moment. But that’s built on a temporary foundation that just needs to survive the rest of 2024.
Sargeant needs to keep performing to stay in the car for the rest of the season, and since he got the same car spec as Albon he's been closer.
This has inevitably reduced some tension that was clearly emerging from car discrepancies and Sargeant feeling he was being unduly criticised during an awkward time. However, it’s clear Sargeant harbours at least some resentment for his situation, whether that’s directed at individuals at Williams, or pundits, the media, or even parts of F1 Twitter.
It's a thorny issue to dissect. Some have wondered whether Sargeant’s being treated poorly because he is American - there is a view that F1 is too Euro-centric and cynical towards drivers/personnel from the US. Others wonder if Sargeant has bought into that idea. Asked by The Race about this topic at the Hungarian Grand Prix, he called it a “thin line question to answer”. “I don’t think I can say what I really think,” he added. “I’ll leave it at that.”
There has at least been a ‘some are with me, most are against me’ vibe creeping through of late. But regardless of the exact cause, Sargeant has strongly implied that he doesn't get credit, internally or externally, when he does well.
He has suggested that, apart from his side of the garage and the people that are working for him and with him, he is not getting the support he deserves either: “You don’t get a pat on the back every time you do a good job from within the team.”
Then there’s the view that external perceptions of him are biased: “I do believe that no matter how I drive, whether it’s good or bad, I’ll get criticised either way. So, I’m at a point where I don’t care what people think. It’s impossible to please everyone. So, I show up and do my best to please myself.”
It is an unenviable position to be in because Sargeant must feel like he’s been written off by at least some people in his own team. He was benched in Australia so Albon could take over his car when Williams didn’t have a spare (even though Albon was the one who crashed), he’s been a step behind Albon on upgrades last year and this year, and his team boss won’t even say for sure that Sargeant will keep his drive all year.
And while it’s quite understandable that Sargeant doesn’t enjoy the criticism of his performances or the speculation about his future, if he performed better then Williams would not be shopping around, and if Williams was not shopping around then there would not be speculation.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he thinks he can only really be judged in this recent run, over a set of races where he is very pleased with his one-lap pace and race performances. There is some truth to that, although the spec differences don’t cover some of the biggest gaps between them earlier in the year, nor big mistakes like crashing in practice in Japan or spinning out of the Canadian GP.
One thing that is still yet to be conclusively proven is that Sargeant can match Albon so closely in race trim. Some errors even in some mitigating circumstances are still holding him back. He broke his front wing on lap one in Austria and got a poor start in Hungary - although between those, had his best weekend in F1 at the the British GP, where he just missed out on a points finish.
He at least has the chance to sign off for the summer break on easily his most convincing run of form in his short F1 career. But will that be enough to save him? Even Sargeant sounds like he knows it won’t.
Sargeant looks doomed at Williams, and in F1 as a result, and it’s just a matter of waiting for that to be confirmed. Although, had this recent run started back at the beginning of the season, maybe he would at least have a fighting chance.
And that’s the biggest issue. Because Williams can point to Sargeant and say ‘where was this from the start?’ and Sargeant can point to Williams and say ‘I didn’t have the car to do this’. So, it’s no great surprise there is some tension - if not on a day-to-day basis, then in how they judge the situation, Sargeant’s performance, and whether he deserves another chance.
Sargeant feels he has given a good account of himself. Vowles is clearly not of that view - or hasn’t been for a long time. That’s why he has so openly courted other options, and not taken multiple opportunities to reject the notion of even dropping Sargeant mid-season.
If that happens, on current form it would be harsh. But the case for keeping Sargeant beyond 2024 is not strong. And he hasn’t even been told that his decent run is matching what Williams has asked of him - though he is “sure those conversations will be had later”.
“For the moment, it's just ‘carry on as we're doing’,” he said.
“One of the bits that's tricky is, because we still have these very small differences, I come to these weekends and ultimately the truth is I have to drive over a tenth quicker to be a thousandth quicker.
“There's still these little differences that make my life a little bit more tricky.
“That's the way it goes.”
And there’s the tension again. How much sympathy you have for Sargeant here depends whether you believe he has been, and/or still is, as disadvantaged as he claims - and if his recent form is proof of his actual level, and if that’s good enough anyway.
When the performance and results aren’t there, a clash of perspectives over why that’s the case is inevitable. An incumbent driver doomed for the exit door will always feel hard done by, or to use Sargeant’s words, believe that “no-one really knows what goes on inside a team other than the people in it”.
But Vowles does. Other people in Williams do. And Sargeant is desperately unlikely to be kept on. Even though he thinks that’s unfair, that is the reality. So is it any wonder that tensions rise and frustrations creep through from time to time?
